


Dead Man Walking

by Trans_Queer_Punk



Category: RWBY
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Drabble, Established Blake Belladonna/Yang Xiao Long, Regret, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-22
Updated: 2019-12-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:20:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21898078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trans_Queer_Punk/pseuds/Trans_Queer_Punk
Summary: It’s so much easier to break things than to repair them.(Trigger warning, see tags.)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	Dead Man Walking

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I’m not an alcoholic so some stuff might be off, this is just based on my personal experience with addiction.  
> I wrote this while listening to Beartooth's album Disgusting.

Qrow is just a spectator in his own life. He’s a walking corpse, an empty puppet controlled by the strings of alcoholism. He watches everything pass him by.

He’s tried to break free, he really has. But the noose tightens every time he tries to leave. 

Even when the doctor tells Qrow that he’s destroying his own body, Qrow can’t stop. On the way out, he throws the pamphlet the doctor gave him in the trash.

There is no hope left for him.

The flashbacks choke him until he reaches delirium. To the point of poisoning himself. Summer’s voice drifts in and out of his consciousness, voicing her concern. Qrow ignores her.

He imagines his own funeral, Huntsmen gathering around a coffin with his unthinking, unfeeling corpse inside. Ruby and Yang will be there, he thinks, and it almost makes him sad to imagine their tears. 

But he’s too far gone to feel anything anymore.

Besides, those two will be better off without him. Aside from his Semblance, which is already damaging them, he knows that having an alcoholic for an uncle can’t be good for them. They’ll be okay, he tells himself. Yang has Blake, Ruby has weaponry. They’ll be okay. 

God, he’s so familiar with denial. Denying that he has a problem, denying that it’s his fault, denying that he needs to change- he does it all. 

Alcoholism almost seems like a natural effect of his Semblance. He brings down everyone around him, ruining lives left and right, and he can’t control it. His vice is as much a part of him as his arm, his Semblance. 

The monster lives within him.

The monster is him.

“Give in,” his vice whispers. “You know you want to.”

“I shouldn’t,” Qrow responds, but he knows what the outcome will be. He’s all-too-familiar with this dance. He tells himself that he’s done drinking, that it’s time to get help, that this time it’ll be different. But he always cracks, and before he even knows what’s happening, he’s halfway into a bottle of Jack Daniels. Then he soothes himself with “it’s just one drink”s, with “it can’t hurt”s, with “I’m already fucked anyway, so why not go all the way?”s. 

And before he knows it, the bottle is finished.

“God, if you’re there, I’m ready to go,” Qrow thinks to himself every night. But no reply. Either no one’s up there, in which case Qrow has been talking to himself all these years, or the fucker won’t listen. 

What kind of sick bastard would create his life just to make him suffer? Who would bring him into existence just to write the sick tragedy his story has become?

Whoever it is, Qrow despises them for it. 

Qrow is falling apart, his body is failing, his mind is deteriorating, but he still keeps waking up every goddamn morning. How long does he have to do this? How much longer is this sick joke going to play out? 

He’s wasting his life now, just waiting for the end. After all, alcoholism is just a societally gratified form of suicide.

And he’s a dead man walking.


End file.
